世論 What Japan Thinks

It’s the weekend, so what nicer than joining the Japanese in one of their favourite pastimes, going for a drive. Before one can go for a drive, one needs a car of course, so why not rent one? But, what points are important when renting a car? goo Rankings tried to find out in this ranking survey conducted between the 20th and 22nd of March 2007.

I rent a car once every few months or so, and I always select Toyota Rentacar, as they are convenient, have car navigation systems as standard, and I especially like renting the Prius as although it might be a bit more expensive, the low fuel costs make up for it, and I do like driving it. A non-smoking car is a given, naturally, and only recently did Toyota introduce booking a specific model as non-smoking, hopefully due to complaints from customers like me.

Just in case you want to rent but your Japanese is not up to it, Hertz use Toyota as their agent in Japan, so you can call them instead to do your booking.
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With the Japanese version of the SOX, or Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which provides a framework for corporate governance, due to be introduced on the first of April 2008, japan.internet.com, in conjuction with JR Tokai Express Research, looked at J-SOX and compliance issues surrounding the law. Their full report, which may be purchased through this link (Japanese only), goes into much more detail on the subject. This article just touches awareness issues.

Demographics

On the 10th of April 2007 330 people from JR Tokai Express Research’s monitor panel and employed in public listed companies completed a private online questionnaire. 80.0% of the sample was male, 13.3% in their twenties, 52.4% in their thirties, 27.9% in their forties, 5.2% in their fifties, and 1.2% in their sixties.

I have only heard about J-SOX compliance from work in respect to password policy for our intranet, and perhaps interestingly enough, searching my employer’s Japanese web site turns up about 26 hits for SOX (once I eliminate pages on NOx and SOx pollutants), but our US web site has just seven hits.

The Japanese term is SOX 法, SOX hou, merely SOX law in English. However, a frequently-heard complaint from the poll-takers was that SOX law or J-SOX does not really mean anything (confusion with Dice-K at the Boston Red Sox, perhaps!) so they wish there was a more Japanese name for it.
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DIMSDRIVE Research recently conducted a poll on the subject of check-out shopping bags, the plastic bags most supermarkets give away free to shoppers. However, some chains have introduced charges for bags, most of the others encourage people to bring their own, and there is talk of introducing legislation to force all shops to charge for bags.

Demographics

Between the 7th and 15th of March, 2007 7,504 members of DIMSDRIVE’s online monitor group successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 58.4% of the sample was female, just 0.3% were in their teens, 16.6% in their twenties, 36.9% in their thirties, 27.9% in their forties, 13.7% in their fifties, and 4.6% aged sixty or older. 65.2% were married; 42.5% worked full-time in the private or public sectors, 24.2% were homemakers, 12.8% were part-timers, 9.2% were self-employed, 5.7% were unemployed (including retirees), 2.9% were students and 2.7% had other employment statuses.

Note that as well as taking your own bag with you, some supermarkets offer baskets for sale. In addition, if you refuse bags, supermarkets often offer points that may be collected and exchanged for gifts.

Last time I was in Austria shopping at a Spar in Vienna, they only had pay-for bags, costing, if I remember correctly, a not insignificant number of Euro cents (60 or so?), but this was for a large and substantial bag, which I think is a far better idea than charging for the current bags which are difficult to reuse for anything other than collecting household garbage, and I think people may be more understanding about paying for something valuable and definitely reuseable.

I’m also glad to see Q1, the frequency of visiting supermarkets, a figure I’ve been interested in finding out for a while!

UPDATE: I see that in the UK, Sainbury’s have launched an “I’m not a plastic bag” bag that seems to have caused quite a stir! Would a similar campaign work here, I wonder, although reading the article I don’t know if they are actually going to be used by the general public, or just kept as keepsakes or investments.
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As part of their 113th Ranking Research, DIMSDRIVE Research asked their online panel what Japanese movies would they recommend to foreigners.

Demographics

5,537 members of their monitor panel successfully completed the questionnaire. 55.0% of the sample was female.

“It’s Hard Being a Man” (Otoko ha Tsurai yo) series seems a rather strange choice, as from what I can gather the plots (or is it plot singular?) are based around such Japanese values that they would be rather difficult to translate, and even with a good translation the cultural cues would be lost on the average viewer. I suspect it might be like recommending the Carry On series to the Japanese as a means of understanding the UK!
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Over the first five days at the start of March MyVoice surveyed their internet community on the topic of personal computers. Note that I will use the term PC throughout, but the survey includes Macs and other kinds of home computers too.

Demographics

15,786 people successfully completed the survey. 54% were female, 2% in their teens, 18% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 15% in their fifties.

As a side-note, I’ve often wondered by MyVoice has no-one over fifty-nine in their samples. Do they have to leave the online community once they reach that age? Do they really mean in their fifties or older in the group? Perhaps I should email them.

Back on PCs, I have a home-built effort, so if I define buying a new one as upgrading the motherboard, I think it was last changed in the year 2000. Marriage does tend to realign your purchasing priorities, or more precisely one gets one’s purchasing priorities realigned for one. I’m still blogging away on a 900 MHz AMD Athlon, and whilst I’d love to buy a dockable portable, or just anything with a quieter fan, sadly my budget is assigned to other things.
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With the recent negative news breaking regarding TOTO toilets going up in smoke, let’s look at the more positive side of Japanese toilets through a survey published by goo Rankings on what function or service people are most happy to find in public restrooms. The survey was conducted between the 22nd and 24th of February 2007, but no more demographic information is available, although looking at the results it is perhaps a mainly female audience who completed the survey. Note that the score column has 100 points for the top vote getter, and for the other entries the score is the percentage of the top’s vote total that that entry received.

The first time I experienced the top ranking warm toilet seat it was a strangely disconcerting feeling, as to that point warmth was associated with someone else having recently used said loo, but now I love the feature, and my toilet at home also has a cloth cover for even more soothing comfort on the chilly nights.

Number four, also known in Japanese by the brand name “Oto Hime”, or “Sound Princess“, plays a wee tune to cover up the plops and splashes as one does one’s business. I saw my first only two weekends ago in a small cafè; I really wanted to press the button, but we were the only customers and the owner is a friend of my wife’s family, so I just couldn’t.
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Over the first five days at the start of March MyVoice surveyed their internet community on the topic of water purifiers and filters.

Demographics

15,793 people successfully completed the survey. 54% were female, 2% in their teens, 20% in their twenties, 38% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties.

Although Japan is rich in natural water resources, as is the case in many other urbanised countries, after passing through much pipework (although no humans, I don’t think) and much processing the city tap water has rather a distinct flavour. In addition, there is the (usually unfounded) worry about bacteria and the like in the public water system, thus many people choose to use water purifying systems.

I’m not sure how to read the answers for Q4. For example, one in five doesn’t use tap water in the bath – I presume this must mean they don’t use cold water, as in the Japanese language hot water is distinct from cold, and perhaps there are some mysterious properties of heating to 50°C that makes it acceptable for use in the tub.
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Between the first and fifth of March this year, yet another survey that MyVoice conducted was into the matter of water-resistant mobile phones.

Demographics

15,771 members of their online community successfully completed the survey. 54% were female, 2% in their teens, 19% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 14% in their fifites.

I must say this is perhaps the oddest mobile phone topic I’ve translated! The only waterproof mobiles I know are the rather chunky and masculine G-Shock watch-inspired G’zOne Casio mobile phones, although I don’t know what the situation is regarding just splash resistance in other handsets. I’ve never given mobile phone waterproofing any thought, myself, and quite frankly I worry about those people who seem to want to read ebooks on their mobiles in the bath, and I hope there is no intersection between the group wanting to use in the bath and those wanting to take photos!
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Between the first and fifth of March this year, yet another survey that MyVoice conducted was into the matter of elementary and middle-school education, covering children between the ages of six and fifteen.

Demographics

15,765 members of their online community successfully completed the survey. 54% were female, 3% in their teens, 19% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 25% in their forties, and 14% in their fifites.

Looking back on my school days, I cannot really say there was much wrong with the, alhough I did grow up in a small town where there were not many social problems. In the present day, however, I could rattle off a million and one things that may be wrong in both my home country and Japan. However, bemoaning the behaviour of the younger generation has been a universal trait since the days of Socrates.

I am surprised that Q4 and Q5 did not have more options about perceived failures of parents to teach their children how to behave, which I feel (as a non-parent) is an important issue in the degradation of the education system. Disturbances in class is just a symptom, not the root cause.

How do English language teachers or those with children in Japanese schools find Japanese schools? How would you rate the problems?
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japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by Cross Marketing Inc into automatic software updating of personal computer operating systems, in particular Windows.

Demographics

Between the 4th and 5th of April 300 members of their online monitor group living in Tokyo and the surrounding area successfully completed a private internet-based survey. As is usual for Cross Marketing, there was an equal split of the sexes 50:50, and of the age bands, with 20.0% in each of the teens, twenties, thirties, forties and fifties age groups.

I do share most of the people’s concern that the reboot dialog is annoying, as once it is there it will keep popping up every five minutes. It really needs a “Please stop reminding me!” check box. My other pet hate is that the background process does slow down my machine a bit when it runs.
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